German Chancellor calls for all to fight climate change

Smoke and steam billow from the chimneys of the Kosovo A power plant, near Obilic, Kosovo, November 10.

BONN, Germany (AP):
German Chancellor Angela Merkel says every country needs to pitch in to keep global temperatures from rising.

Merkel said in her weekly podcast on Saturday that climate change was an urgent problem, and that every country has to help limit global warming to below "2 or, even better, 1.5 degrees Celsius" - the target set by the 2015 Paris climate accord by the end of the century.

Diplomats from around the world are meeting in the German city of Bonn to discuss implementing the Paris accord.

Merkel also said it's the responsibility of the industrial countries to develop environment-friendly technologies that are future-oriented, but "don't lead to a loss of jobs."

She said: "We don't gain anything if steel mills, aluminum plants and copper mills leave our countries and go somewhere else where environmental regulations are less strict - because then we haven't made any gains for world climate."